Children face different challenges today than in decades past — more stressors sometimes from family settings, the recent pandemic, social media pressures — things those in other generations did not face in such abundance or at all.

It’s a positive to see recent steps taken by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the Bowling Green Independent School District to address the mental health of children.

Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman recently summarized her career in education, with a glaring omission – in all her educational experiences, up to earning her doctorate, she’d never had training on student mental health.

Now, Kentucky is one of six states that has been selected for a national, yearlong program focused on achieving state-level mental health goals.

Coleman credits this to her team’s focus on the youth mental health crisis ever since COVID-19 hit in 2020.

She expressed her optimism about the selection and lamented the educational framework she has that was minus training on students’ mental health.

“What that tells me is there’s at least half of the educated workforce that has never been prepared to deal with these challenges that we’re facing right now,” she said. “How to talk about it, how to recognize and refer, and that’s alarming to me.”

Kentucky, with five other states, will participate in the National Governors Association’s latest mental health initiative – The Policy Academy to Drive Thriving Youth Mental Health and Wellbeing.

The academy is designed to leverage national resources and expertise to advance statewide mental health goals. Coleman’s Kentucky team will meet with NGA regularly to work through challenges.

There are three main goals – explore ways to better fund mental health services in schools, train educators to identify and support students’ – and teachers’ – mental health, and establish a statewide mental health coordinating body.

A focus on students’ mental health is not new, but in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, more problems arose, and the ramification of that lack of social growth and academic time in school still affects students and their mental maturation process.

BGISD, meanwhile, has expanded its suicide prevention policy by adding resources to students in grades 4-12. 

The new suicide prevention policy expands on what the district has already been practicing, which was a one-time prevention training in September across grades 6-12.

“I think that’s just a realization that we just have a lot of kids in distress and we want to make sure everybody has the tools to help kids when they need help,” BGISD Superintendent Gary Fields said. “Students are provided with a slew of suicide prevention information. We do some surveys with them, allowing kids to let us know if they’re having a rough time.”

We applaud the efforts, both state and local, to provide help where it is needed — in our school systems.